Bain, Suffering and Cory Booker’s Emotional Distress

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Booker called President Barack Obama’s advertisement criticizing Mitt Romney’s tenure at the
private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC “nauseating.” His comment
has been portrayed as a disagreement with the president over
Obama’s ad strategy. What Booker was actually doing, however,
was shoring up his base: Bain Capital and all those similarly
situated firms that have supported him in the past and will,
presumably, do so in the future if he ardently defends them.

“Nauseating” is a word that demands to be heard. Booker
could have said “wrong,” “unfair,” “ill-advised.” But he didn’t.
And his voice is all the louder directed at the man he is
supporting for president.

Aside from describing what Obama’s advertisement is doing
to his stomach, Booker said, “We’re getting to a ridiculous
point in America.” He added, “It’s either going to be a small
campaign about this crap or it’s going to be a big campaign, in
my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares
about.”

All that said, Booker’s comments might have faded into
Sunday talk show obscurity were they not such a clear example of
how deeply our politics are controlled by money. Booker wasn’t
committing a Kinsley gaffe, the term for when a politician
accidentally tells the truth.

Purposeful Truth-Telling

He was purposefully telling the truth. Nary a cent for his
mayoral campaigns (or revitalizing his city) came from Newark or
New Jersey. Most of it came from the mountain of private equity
and investment banking just across the Hudson, from which hedge-
fund managers and other banking types write big checks to Romney
and howl over “class warfare.”

For Obama, this is a lesson in how not to choose a
surrogate: Stay away from people still in the game and hoping to
run for higher office. No one goes straight from Newark City
Hall to the Oval Office. On his trajectory upward, Booker might
enjoy the help of Obama -- but he absolutely needs the deep
pockets of Wall Street.

Booker could replace Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is 88
and whose term expires in 2015. Or Booker could run for governor
in 2013 against his good friend Chris Christie.

They immortalized their relationship in a video for a New
Jersey Press Association Legislative Correspondents dinner.
Playing off the Seinfeld-Newman rivalry, they spoof each other
with the heroic man of action Booker outdoing the governor at
every turn, telling Christie, “I got this” as he changes a flat
tire, retrieves Bruce Springsteen’s missing guitar and catches a
baby falling from a balcony at the State Capitol. Then at the
end Christie grabs the phone from Booker when a call comes from
Romney. Smiling, Christie says, “I got this.”

If Booker will diss Obama on “Meet the Press,” he certainly
won’t shy from wiping that smile off Christie’s face -- a move
that will be expensive. To do that, Booker will need Wall
Street, and he has seen what can happen to you when you don’t
bow to the 1 percent.

For nothing, really, Obama lost their love. He neglected to
thank them for treating the economy like a casino, nearly
destroying it. Later he mildly criticized them for awarding
themselves outsized bonuses after being rescued by the U.S.
taxpayer, once referring to them as “fat cats.” Compare this to
FDR saying he welcomed the hatred of the banks or JFK facing
down “a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of
private power and profit exceeds their sense of public
responsibility.”

Closing the Casino

If anything, Obama hasn’t done enough to close down the
casino. The regulation in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law
has been so watered down at the behest of lobbyists that
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon,
drove a Brinks truck through the loopholes. His $2 billion-plus
gambling loss is not enough to require help from the Treasury --
yet. Lose a few billion more, however, and he might.

It all adds up to one more example of how the rich are
different from you and me: They have very thin skins. Obama’s
take from Wall Street groups that gave him record amounts of
cash in 2008 (twice as much as to John McCain) is way down.
Booker can’t afford that.

Still, Booker had to retreat a little or look as if he was
openly courting the rich guy at the expense of the little one.
(You’re supposed to woo the rich guy in private.) So Booker made
a video to “expand on his support for President Obama,” which
has everything but a newspaper held up to verify that the
hostage is still alive. In one of those clarifying statements
perfected by politicians, in which he seemed to be reading off a
script on his open laptop, Booker explained that when he used
the word “nauseating,” he was referring to how he feels when he
sees “people in my city struggling with real issues.”

Real or not, this political tiff pushed aside wars and the
European financial collapse at Obama’s news conference at the
NATO summit in Chicago. Obama reformulated his argument for
Booker and any other Democrat who might choose Wall Street over
Pennsylvania Avenue: “If your main argument for how to grow the
economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’
then you’re missing what this job is about.”

In fairness to Booker, Democrats have a harder time than
Republicans when it comes to raising money from the rich.
Republicans are expected to do the wealthy’s bidding, so they
need not be apologetic about accepting their money. Democrats
are supposed to be looking out for the little guy, so we are
naturally suspicious when they take meals in the private dining
rooms of Park Avenue. It brings to mind the wisdom of the late
Jesse Unruh, former speaker of the California Assembly: “If you
can’t drink a lobbyist’s whiskey, take his money, sleep with his
women and still vote against him in the morning, you don’t
belong in politics.”

Booker, a Rhodes scholar who lived in the projects and
relates easily to both extremes of American society, has had a
smooth ride so far. Like most politicians, he’s in hock to only
one extreme. Unlike most pols, he was a little too candid about
his choice. As he enters the expensive world of a statewide
race, Booker can live without a friend (the president) -- but
not without a multimillionaire or two. Undoubtedly he’s betting
the private-equity guys will remember the first video, and
everyone else the second.

(Margaret Carlson is a Bloomberg View columnist. The
opinions expressed are her own.)